In July 2009, our beautiful son Adam was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, an aggressive children's cancer. Despite four years of treatment in the UK, Germany, and America, Adam sadly passed away on 11th July 2013 at home with his family. Visit Adam's Appeal at http://adamsappeal.org.

Monday, 28 February 2011

Goodbye Hospital, Hello Hospital ...

So Adam got out of hospital on Thursday evening, a pretty impressive achievement for stem cell transplant in the scheme of things. Since then we've had a visit from the community nurse on Friday to do a full blood count, followed later by a trip to Epsom General for a platelet transfusion; a trip to Epsom General on Saturday to do a full blood count; a trip to Epsom General on Sunday to do a full blood count, followed later by a trip to Epsom General for a platelet transfusion. And today (Monday) Alison has taken Adam up to day-care at the Royal Marsden for a check-up and, yep you guessed it, to do a full blood count.

I'm sure you get the picture. We may be home, but we are still very much in the thick of things. It's highly likely Adam will require platelet and (less frequently) blood transfusions for a while yet, though hopefully it won't be every other day for too much longer. Not only was his bone marrow completely wiped out by the high-dose chemotherapy, but also the MIBG radiation therapy he had previously is both very hard on the marrow and its effects quite long lasting.

Aside from the trips to hospital Adam has been quite well in himself. His eating has been steadily improving and we're really hoping to see some weight going back on this week. We had a brief excursion to the shops on Saturday which Adam enjoyed, although he was a little worn out by the time we got back. Both he and Jessica bought themselves Paper Jamz pretend guitar make-lots-of-loud-noise things. They then proceeded to rock out all around the house at various intervals during the weekend. Looked like fun actually, but I was NOT allowed to play. Throw in a little bit of Xbox, a copious amount of club penguin online, some power rangers morphers/weapons, beyblade battles, and the usual suspects on Disney Channel and Nikelodeon, and you've pretty much got the whole of Adam's weekend covered.

We may be back-and-forth to the hospital like the proverbial yo-yo. but having started February with Adam in hospital it feels good to be ending it with him sleeping in his own bed.